A Clear Path

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was duty.
I acted and behold duty was joy.
- Rabindranath Tagore

“Of course you know
how to roller-skate. And you are
graceful at it. But consider the consequences of a fall.” With these words, my
wife refocused my attention on the big picture. And the view was so clear, I
have not been on roller-skates in three years, and probably will not skate
again.

The simple fact is
that it would be irresponsible for me to expose myself to that kind of risk. I
have a wife, six children, fourteen grandchildren, employees and clients who
depend on me for one thing or another. If I were injured, their lives would
suffer. So with some regret, but a strong sense of doing the right thing, I gave
away my skates.

In the three years
since I made that decision, I’ve been amazed at how many well-meaning and
otherwise-responsible friends have tried to talk me into going skating.
“Everything, even staying in bed, is risky,” said one. “Take the chance!
Besides, nobody’s indispensable.” Another said, “I thought you had faith in
God! Do you mean you don’t trust Him to take care of you on skates?”

What’s really at issue
is duty—no longer a well-understood
concept in America.
“Duty” consists of the undifferentiated requirements of a position. I have a
duty as a father, another as a grandfather, another as a son, another as a
consultant to my clients, another as an employer—you get the idea. I believe
duty should be our main directive in every situation. If you believe, as I do,
that God speaks in everyone’s heart all the time, I think you will find that
His voice rarely contradicts duty. And while I trust Him completely, I do not trust Him to take care of me if I go
against my duty without a revelation to the contrary.

The duty of the
engineer is often explicit, as in the case of professional engineers. But it is
also comprehended more broadly. Members of the Society of the Engineer wear an
iron pinky-ring, the first exemplars of which were ostensibly made from the
ruins of a collapsed bridge in eastern Canada. This is to remind engineers
of their duty to the safety of the public.

Sadly, duty is at odds
with the main religion in America
today: The Church of Instant Self-Gratification. The media pound home the
message all day and all night: Don’t think—just do it! You need it now! You deserve it! You have a right
to it!

Interestingly,
however, the path of duty is usually the path of greatest personal fulfillment.
When we discern and do those things that we should, we have a satisfaction that
cannot be obtained in any other way.And
we also find the Universe rising up to sustain and protect us in
previously-unimaginable ways.

If jobs and workflow
and organizations were designed in keeping with duty—the duty of the employee
to the employer, the duty of the designer to the ultimate user of a product,
the duty of an employer to the employee, and so on—there would be no need for
the management fad du jour. Instead,
many of us must daily face situations in which there is no clear path of duty,
or where there seem to be conflicting duties. We need a way to resolve such
difficulties.

How are we to resolve
apparently conflicting duties? We must have a clear hierarchy, or we will
always be running into trouble and frustration. Here’s
mine: God, me, wife, kids, work/clients, other relatives, friends, neighbors,
rest of world. You may think it unspiritual, or even selfish, to have myself
second. Yet if I do not take care of myself, I will let down my wife, kids,
clients, and everyone else.

My duty hierarchy
gives me guidance in confronting apparently conflicting demands. But it doesn’t
necessarily make it easy. Say a client needs me on a weekend that I have
scheduled to spend with my kids (all of whom are grown). My duty hierarchy
indicates I must turn the client down. But what if the client’s need is critical, and I just saw all the kids last weekend? I call
the kids and explain, and make an exception.

The temptation is to
see every situation as an exception, and to allow duty to be abrogated. That
destroys the concept entirely. Better to err on the side of duty.

Duty is comforting. Knowing what you’re supposed
to do in most situations is a great relief, especially when there is no one to
tell you what to do.

As a Baby Boomer, I
was raised to hold rebellion and revolution in high regard. This left me
morally adrift, with no anchor. Duty, with God as its source, has transformed
me. Try it—for at least three months. You will like it.